Comments on: CoMBi Clock

By: Bogdan

Bogdan — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:35:19 +0000

Reading the clock takes a while, I tend to ignore the seconds and read hours and minutes. Should take 10-15 seconds with practice, maybe less.
If you are going to shrink it to wrist size you have two issues to address: making it small enough and the battery. Making it small requires smaller leds, such as 5060 SMD size and arranging them differently, maybe in a circle. You can also skip the seconds and go for just red/green bi color leds. The battery issue means that you cannot leave the leds on all the time unless you can do with a big battery and a short life. Or just ad a button to turn on the uC, read the data from the RTC and display it.

By: Adele

Adele — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:47:34 +0000

I have been thinking about this same clock for a while when I found this design. Is there any way it can be shrunk down into a wrist watch? Also, how long does it take to get real quick at reading the time? With a binary clock with separate digits and colors for hours/mins/secs it is instant, so I was wondering if the same can come true with this design.
Great work!

By: Keith Brown

Keith Brown — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:42:37 +0000

Done

By: bogdanfirst

bogdanfirst — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:12:16 +0000

Great job and nice collection of links! Please add mine too.

By: Keith D. Brown

Keith D. Brown — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:52:12 +0000

Just stumbled across this design. You may want to take a look at my own design for a colour clock . It was published in Circuit Cellar in 2003. A little bit of self-training is required there, too, but once learned it is easy to use. Some people pick it up really fast, some not!

By: Electronics-Lab.com Blog » Blog Archive » CoMBi Clock: RGB binary clock

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:10:49 +0000

[...] Clock: RGB binary clock - [Link] Tags: Binary, Clock Filed in Led, Timer | 1 views No Comments [...]

By: Mark Vice

Mark Vice — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:46:16 +0000

Great post!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:46:50 +0000

Okay, got it Thanks!

By: bogdanfirst

bogdanfirst — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:00:09 +0000

@ Daniel
When you look at the clock in the dark, you don’t see the LEDs, just the light. The rightmost led corresponds to seconds, which means that it it on at least 1 out of every 2 seconds(if minutes and hours don’t need it).
That LED and the white LED will mark the beginning and the end of the binary number, in terms of space. I thought it is easier to appreciate exactly the numbers this way at the time of the design. You can go without it for sure, but i considered it would be of great help. Also, i was planning on using it as sign for the temperature display….just in case it was needed. (it’s not that cold inside ) ).

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:15:09 +0000

Amazing design, really great work!
But I didn’t get it yet: What is the white LED supposed to do? You write it’s there to make readout easier in darkness, but how? Enlighten me, please

By: bogdanfirst

bogdanfirst — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:52:55 +0000

Thanks! I know that the DS3232 has a temperature sensor inside, but as i found out from another project i have used it in, the error can be as high as 4 deg centigrade. It didn’t prove to be just a simple offset that i could correct for, there seems to be some slope error too, as the error varied with temperature. I didn’t investigate it further. That was why i was going to use a DS18S20 or something similar.

By: lastaid

lastaid — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:41:51 +0000

Nicest thing i’ve ever seen

By: gmg

gmg — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:35:43 +0000

If you want temperature, you can get it directly from the RTC (at least you can on the DS3231 where it’s stored in registers $11 and $12. And updated every 64 seconds.) Nice build.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:26:43 +0000

Congrats on making HAD front!

By: Color clock makes telling time impossible - Hack a Day

Color clock makes telling time impossible - Hack a Day — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:00:54 +0000

[...] didn’t want to be ordinary, and set the goal of making the clock as hard to read as possible. What he ended up with is a clock that is almost impossible to read correctly. He’s using colors to tell the time. We [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:09:03 +0000

Hey. Interesting design. Keep it up!
(I’m in the category that didn’t take the time to read the clock.)